The Shadow Queen Is Too Alluring—I Can't Handle This Anymore!
Chapter 87 – “The Kneeling Flame”

Chapter 87: Chapter 87 – “The Kneeling Flame”

Lyra didn’t speak.

She couldn’t.

The throne beneath her still pulsed like it was alive—its heartbeat a slow, ancient rhythm, thudding through her bones. Her fingers curled against the obsidian armrests, trembling with restrained power. Her body was whole again, but different.

Reforged.

Her silver-black hair billowed behind her, brushing against the jagged throne-spikes like smoke caught in moonlight. Her new brands glowed faintly on her forearms—one a wing, the other a teardrop. Symbols of balance. Of choice.

But her gaze remained fixed on the impossible.

Her mother—the Shadow Phoenix, the terror of empires—was kneeling.

One knee on the fractured stone, head bowed. Her long obsidian robes fanned around her like liquid night. The burning mask she once wore now floated behind her like a dead sun, dimmed and powerless.

"I am no longer your queen," she said, voice reverent. "You are mine now."

Lyra’s throat tightened.

She had imagined this moment for years—where her mother would look her in the eye and see her.Not as a pawn.Not as a prophecy.But as her daughter.

And now that it had arrived, it felt like glass in her lungs.

"Why?" she asked, voice hoarse. "Why kneel now?"

The Shadow Phoenix lifted her head. Her eyes—Lyra’s eyes, only older, wearier—met hers.

"Because the throne answered you."

"I didn’t want it."

"No," she said. "But you earned it anyway. That’s what makes you different from me."

Lyra’s hands tightened. "Then tell me everything. No more riddles. No more curses."

Her mother’s gaze softened.

"Then you must know this," she whispered. "I was not the first Shadow Phoenix."

The chamber darkened.

Not with shadow—but with memory.

The walls melted into shifting scenes—visions painted in flame and ash.Lyra saw a throne in a different age, surrounded by corpses. A woman, screaming in a dead language, chained to the very seat Lyra now ruled.Then another. And another.

Over centuries, the throne had crowned not queens—but sacrifices.

Each woman who sat upon it gave something away—sanity, soul, or salvation.In return, they were granted the ability to control shadows... and the power to never truly die.

"I was chosen during the Eclipse Era," her mother said softly. "I thought I could control it. Instead, I became its prisoner."

Lyra swallowed. "And me?"

"You were the escape plan."

Those four words hit like a dagger between the ribs.

"You were the escape plan."

Not the chosen.Not the heir.Not the miracle.

Just the loophole.

Lyra stood, rising from the throne slowly. Her knees almost buckled again—not from weakness, but from the sheer weight of it all.

All this time...

All the exile.All the tests.Kael. Aelira. The runes. The pain.All so that her mother could eventually bow out.

"I gave you a life beyond the throne," the Shadow Phoenix said, almost gently. "You made it back anyway."

"And you didn’t think I’d hate you for it?"

Her mother didn’t flinch. "I expected you to survive. Hate is part of survival."

Lyra let out a bitter laugh. "You trained me to become the thing you feared."

"No," she said. "I trained you to become the thing I couldn’t."

The line lingered in the air, hovering like smoke over coals.

The girl inside Lyra—the child who waited for her mother every night in exile, staring at a starless sky—wanted to sob.Wanted to scream.Wanted to crawl back into time and undo it all.

But the queen?

She stood still.

Power didn’t come with healing. It came with clarity.

And the truth was a crown with thorns.

"You used me," Lyra said quietly.

"Yes."

"You lied to me."

"Yes."

"You broke me."

"I know."

Silence stretched between them. The throne behind Lyra whispered, almost in approval.But then her mother whispered something else.

"But I loved you."

Lyra’s heart cracked.

Not broke.Cracked.

Like a dam holding back lifetimes of anger and grief and impossible questions. Her knees trembled, but she didn’t fall.

Instead, tears welled in her eyes—not out of sorrow, but out of something older.Something colder.

"I don’t know if I can forgive you," she said.

"You don’t have to," her mother said, standing at last. "You just have to be better."

Lyra looked past her—through the shattered arches of the throne room.

Aelira stood there, bloodied but upright. Kael... unconscious or dead, still wrapped in broken chains. Soldiers of the Ash Sentinels kneeling. The Spire Knights bowing with confusion in their eyes.

And overhead—red sky. No longer from the invading army.

But from something worse.

Lyra stepped down from the throne.

And suddenly the entire castle shook.

Not from magic.

But from the approach of something massive.

The ground rumbled. Wind howled.And then—like a curtain ripping across the world—the sky split open again.

But this time...

It wasn’t her mother.And it wasn’t fate.

A colossal eye opened above the capital—formed of flame and void.It blinked once.

A voice thundered across every soul:

"The Throne Has Chosen... But I Am Not Done."

Lyra froze.

Her mother’s face drained of all color.

"No," the Shadow Phoenix whispered. "It’s not possible. It’s still alive—"

"What is?" Lyra demanded.

Her mother turned to her, dread sinking into every syllable.

"The First Shadow," she said. "The true king. The one the throne was built to contain."

The sky wept black fire.

Not rain. Not ash.

Fire.

Lyra staggered back as the air turned dense, thick as oil. Every breath felt like inhaling someone else’s nightmare. A deafening silence rippled across the throne room—as if even the world had forgotten how to scream.

The eye in the sky—colossal and ancient—blinked once more. From within it, darkness began to spill downward in tendrils. Not smoke. Not shadow.

Memory.

Below, Aelira clutched the edge of a fallen column, blood smeared across her cheek, her gaze fixed on Lyra. "What... what is that?"

Lyra couldn’t answer.

She turned toward her mother—who now looked like she’d seen a god crawl out of the past. The Shadow Phoenix didn’t speak. She simply dropped her blade and fell to her knees again.

"It’s real," she whispered. "We didn’t kill it. We only... slept."

Lyra’s thoughts swirled with dread. Her victory was supposed to mean freedom. Power. A new beginning.Not another prophecy.Not another curse.Not this.

You earned the throne, she told herself. You bled for it. Fought for it. Chose it.

So why did it still feel like someone else was pulling the strings?

The throne behind her pulsed again—but not with loyalty. With fear.

Whatever was coming through the eye in the sky... the throne knew it.And it was terrified.

She stepped down from the dais, shadow trailing behind her like an untethered beast. Her voice trembled, but she forced the words out anyway.

"Tell me. What is the First Shadow?"

The Shadow Phoenix rose slowly. Her expression was no longer maternal—it was warrior, widow, and survivor fused into one.

"It was the first soul to ever sit upon the throne," she said. "Before queens. Before kings. Before even time. The throne was made to hold it, not crown it."

"And now?"

Her mother’s lips barely moved. "Now... it wants its seat back."

The sky cracked like a porcelain bowl smashed by divine hands.

From the center of the rift, a figure began to descend. Slowly. Purposefully. It had no face—only a crown of molten horns and robes that dragged the cosmos behind it like a funeral veil. Each step it took down the spiraling flame-path turned the clouds into black ice.

Soldiers below dropped their weapons and screamed. Others simply knelt and wept—like memories they didn’t own had been force-fed into their minds.

The First Shadow didn’t speak. It didn’t need to.

Its presence alone was enough to rewrite truth.

Lyra’s runes sparked in warning. The wing and teardrop symbols on her forearms pulsed violently, like they were trying to tear themselves off her skin and flee.

You’re not ready, they whispered.

But she didn’t move.

Didn’t flinch.

She stared straight at the ancient force crashing into her world, and she stood tall.

"You’re late," Lyra growled.

The First Shadow finally reached the courtyard. It stood at the heart of her broken city, towering, silent. And then—

It bowed.

Every soldier. Every bird. Every flicker of light held still.

The First Shadow bent low, its voice leaking into every corner of the realm like rot beneath skin.

"Little Queen," it said, voice like a dead star falling. "Sit no further. For the throne was mine before your gods were born."

Aelira cried out, collapsing from the pressure. The knights shielding her turned to stone mid-breath.

Lyra summoned her wings, flaring them wide as shadow curled around her like an answer.

"You lost your throne," she spat.

The First Shadow raised its head. "I was banished. By your mother’s mother. And her mother before that. Each of them fed their daughters to the same seat, hoping I’d fade."

"You failed," Lyra hissed.

"I waited," it whispered. "And now... I choose."

A massive chain erupted from the earth—twisting up from under the city like the spine of a dead god. It slammed down toward Lyra.

She raised her arm—the wing mark glowed white-hot—and the chain exploded mid-air, vaporized by her own will.

Power. Pure, endless, terrifying power.She felt it bloom through her bones, crackle in her nerves.Not just the throne’s strength.Not just inherited magic.But her own.

For the first time, Lyra understood: the curse, the deaths, the fragments—they weren’t punishment.

They were preparation.

"I am not your heir," she said. "I’m your terminus."

The First Shadow stilled.

And smiled.

"You think you can kill me?"